Croatia: Mobile Telecoms Market Overview
T-Mobile
Cronet was the mobile subsidiary of Croatian Telecom a company founded in January 1999 after the separation of HPT (Croatian Post and Telecommunications) into HP (Croatian Post) and HT (Hrvatski telekom or Croatian Telecom).
Deutsche Telekom then acquired 35 percent of Hrvatski telekom in October 1999 and the 16 percent require for majority control two years later.
In January 2003, Hrvatski Telekom assembled all of its mobile activities under a single brand, HTmobile. Then, in October 2004, HTmobile became T-Mobile Hrvatska, (T-Mobile Croatia).
T-Mobile began rolling out its 3G network in March 2005 using equipment supplied by Siemens Mobile Networks Division. It now has 3G coverage in the majority populous city areas.
VIPnet
VIPnet were the first privately-owned company to launch a mobile network in Croatia. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Mobilkom Austria Group.
VIPnet has operated its GSM network since 1999, breaking CRONET (now T-Mobile)’s monopoly and beginning to introduce many services unavailable to Croatia previously such as SMS and pre-paid service plans.
VIPnet operate a 900MHz GSM and 2100MHz UMTS network which supports GPRS, MMS, EDGE, UMTS and HSDPA technologies. They were the first to introduce a number of these technologies to the Croatian market and remain a technological leader in the field. In 2006 they received licences to operate WiMAX and fixed-line networks, both of which have yet to launch commercially.
When the company launched Croatia’s mobile penetration rate was 4.6 percent and as of the first quarter of 2008 it reached 116.53 percent (as graphed below).
Tele2
Tele2 received a licence to operate GSM and UMTS in early 2005 and launched a GSM 1800 network in March 2006. It launched limited UMTS services in the Zagreb area by the end of 2006. It also offers data transmission services via GPRS and MMS services to the whole territory of the Republic of Croatia.
The company is a joint investment company of Tele2 AB and nine domestic investors: Privredna Banka Zagreb dd, Croatia Insurance Inc., Nexe Group Ltd., Konstruktor Engineering Inc., Dalekovod dd, FIMA Holding dd, Jamnica dd, the Croatian Institute of Civil Engineering Inc. and M SAN Group Ltd.